LIVE w/ Dr. Kevin Roberts: Saving the American Family, SCOTUS on Women's Sports, and Fulton Sheen

And we're live. Welcome back to the LOOPcast. It's Tom, Erika, and Dr. Kevin Roberts, President of Heritage, former President of Wyoming Catholic College. I believe that the term cowboy Catholic was given to you at one point, which I can't lie, goes hard. Very cool.

Thank you for joining the show today. Oh, it's my pleasure. I am a longtime friend and advocate for everything that you do. It's a real honor to be with you. Thank you. And I got this off, so I think it's safe to make this. I did not tell Josh he had to replace himself with another bald guest. He did that himself. I didn't do it. There's only so many perfect heads, as he says all the time, and you have one. Yeah, I do, and it's one of the many reasons I love Josh Mercer, is that we both compete for the best shine.

Well, that sounds good. Well, the LOOPcast is brought to you by The Loop, every American Catholic's favorite morning newsletter. I believe you read. Is this correct? Absolutely. In fact, my wife, most days when I get home, she said, well, did you see this in The Loop? And if for some reason I didn't get to it that morning because I was busy, I get scolded. She said, that's the most important thing you could read. No, I tell her that, and you think that I'm just being polite as a Southerner.

No, I mean that entirely. As she should, as she should. Well, today's show, you wrote this excellent report. Saving the American family. It's funny, we were just talking about this week how we are refreshed by both Pope Leo and then continuing to push the Trump administration to focus on the nuclear family.

So, take this how you will. I am a little skeptical sometimes of think tanks because they get a little wonky. They are a little bit dry, and they talk about things I do not really care about. I could not believe reading through this report. I mean, I knew it was thick, but I saw Aristotle. I saw Cicero. I saw suggestions that I think people would have blushed at maybe even 10 years ago, 20 years ago. So, I am really excited to get your two cents on it, and of course, I mean, you are the author.

So, we are going to talk about that. We also have the Supreme Court decision coming up after. Well, potentially a big decision on the future of women's sports, and women's, I mean, just keeping men in on women's sports. So, I'm excited to hear from Erika on that. We also have some insider church news, and then finally, we got a piece from Politico about the Trump administration having to give back some funding that has been making the round. So, I have some context on that.

We have Tom McCluskey, a friend of the program as well. We have his two cents on that, but before we do, we have to get into the reason we do the show today, Charity Mobile. So, if you're still spending your hard-earned money with a phone company who doesn't value you and your beliefs, Charity Mobile is a pro-life phone company serving pro-life customers and causes its time to make the switch. They send 5% of your monthly plan price to the pro-life, pro-family charity of your choice, and no extra cost to you.

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Switch to Charity Mobile and buy the way you believe. To get started, visit CharityMobile.com and use promo code LOOPcast. That's CharityMobile.com, promo code LOOPcast. Thank you, Charity Mobile, for sponsoring today's episode. Okay. Dr. Kevin Roberts, got some questions for you. First off, I know this is a part of a larger pillar, but what inspired writing this report? And then I was refreshed by the philosophical underpinnings of it. Why was it so important to go as deep as Aristotle and Cicero to the organization and then bringing that, say, to the Trump administration?

Well, let me say a couple things. First, great to be with you, but to your point, sort of sarcastic comment, which I loved, Tom, about think tanks, you should be skeptical of most think tanks. Not because, especially if they're on the right side, that they do bad work, but because the whole purpose of a think tank is to write white papers, and this is why we at Heritage don't refer to ourselves as a think tank. We're definitely a public policy organization, but as important to us, and this is getting to the heart of your question, as important to us as the research itself, Is what you do with it.

And so, the whole purpose of the Heritage Foundation for 53 years isn't merely to write studies, but then to take those studies and go to the halls of Congress and now the halls of a majority of state legislatures and advocate for that policy. In other words, to actually do something about that research. And so, the basis, the origin story of this family policy paper, which took us three years to publish.

How deep and focused it is, is we sat back and we asked ourselves the question. If the 2024 election goes well, and we assumed that President Trump would be elected again, then we have an opportunity not just to address tax policy, to address foreign policy, education policy, all of them very important, right? But to also tackle big civilizational questions. And what's the biggest civilizational question facing the United States and the West and most of the world? And that is, what is the future of the nuclear family?

And to sum up here in terms of policy, which I'm sure you'll want to get into, we are arguing as a stridently conservative public policy organization that in addition to the very important cultural, social, and economic factors, that you also can use federal policy and state policy to be part of the solution. That is innovative in Washington, D.C. for a conservative organization to say, and we're very proud of that because to your point about philosophy, if you read Aristotle or Cicero for Also, for those of us who are Roman Catholics, if you read Familiaris Consortio, you know that all of the goods we experience in society flow from the family.

They don't flow from some either in the community, certainly not from government. In other words, if we want the American Republic to flourish in the beginning of the Golden Age, the American family has to be flourishing first. Yeah, I actually have two questions for you based directly off that, and I actually encourage everyone to go to read the report. I love what you said about Aristotle and Cicero. I mean, the nursery, as it were, of the state. So, there's two problems, I think, that you do a good job establishing, but everyone kind of feels and experiences now, is that we're not having enough children.

And there's many different reasons for that. One of the reasons that you write in the paper is the welfare state. Like, the state itself somewhat manufactured or maybe accelerated this rapid decline in family formation in general, but also having children and bringing them up in a two-parent household. So, the innovation, as you said, I think is, instead of the, I'd say, standard conservative approach of keep the government's hands off of everything. They have no place in this. They caused the problem.

They should just be out of it in general. Why are you making the argument that government involvement actually can be positive and productive, and then is the problem reversible at this point? Like, I guess you wouldn't have wrote it if you didn't think so, but how can we actually make concrete changes? For the family, so that we can have more children and replace and just keep the Republic going.

We are making the argument that government can play a role because government has proven that tax policy, certain administrative rules with safety net reform, welfare programs, generally speaking, can change behavior. In particular, we have proven since 1965 with the misnamed war on poverty that government policy, federal policy in particular, can erode the marriage rate and it can erode the birth rate such that Now, as an entire society, speaking about all Americans, our fertility rate is 1.59, well below the replacement rate of 2.1, and so our thesis at Heritage is, moving on to the second point, if, in fact, government can change behavior with policy, how about you use government to change behavior for the better?

Now, I want to be really clear. We have not lost our conservative minds here at Heritage. It would be very valid for someone to ask the quick question, as you have, well, is that, in fact, conservative? Don't you sound like a liberal? No, we're saying... Cultural and social and economic factors are still very important, but even they aren't sufficient for changing this behavior. We need an all-of-the-above approach, which includes federal policy, and what I am sure, Tom, will be some state policy that flows from that in order to reach that sufficient set of solutions.

And to the point about urgency, that is precisely why we are saying, as a conservative organization, we need to be thinking about Turning on its head, that set of government policies that have had the opposite effect we're arguing for in the paper.

Yeah. Erika, I want to give you the chance, if you have any specific questions, before I get into the solutions. Yes, I appreciate it. Well, actually, I wanted to turn to solutions as well, because there are specific policy recommendations made in here, and I wanted to ask sort of a procedural question. How did you come up with these? Like, did you go into state law or even local ordinance and say, hey, those local or state policies seem to work in this case, and so let's apply those?

The federal level, or were you looking to other sources? How did you actually come up with, okay, this is what is going to work, and do we know they are going to work because of the way you found them as a work? Well, as the head of a public policy organization where we geek out for a living, I love that question, Erika, so thanks for asking, and it gives me the opportunity to celebrate the great work of my colleagues, social scientists, economists, my great friends, Roger Severino and Jay Richards themselves, just terrific.

And yes, the conclusions, even the rhetoric of the paper are really good, but that all starts with the methodology. So, the bottom line is that there were three big sources of information we looked at. First of all, federal policy and federal law, and that, as you know, is the big source of that. But the second is looking at social science research done by people like Brad Wilcox at the University of Virginia, my great friend Mark Regnerus at the University of Texas.

This is an academic quality paper. In terms of looking at what the non-politicized social science research says about how you can incentivize and disincentivize marriage, and that leads me to the third source of information that we use, and this was really important for us, and it's one of the reasons the paper took us so long to complete. We wanted to look at other countries that have attempted similar innovations, and what we learned, frankly, was mixed, and as we went through each updated hypothesis, what we do, Properly use the scientific method here.

When we would see data that was really conclusive one way or the other, positive or negative about national policy incentivizing marriage, we would then continue to do our research, and what we found is that in places like Singapore and Hungary, and especially the nation of Israel, that there are some sources of data that are conclusive that national policy can incentivize higher marriage rates, and then we think Over the passing of time, that we will see an increase in birth rates as well.

This is why we can be so convicted that if, in fact, along with federal and state policy, culture and society writ large, see some changing trends that are much more welcoming to marriage and to birth, that we might live through a renaissance of American marriage. Well, here, I guess I can just say, you know, I have two young kids. I'm 28. I'm trying to grow my family. You are the renaissance, Tom. Right there. I hope so. But I guess, you know, it almost felt like this was written directly for me, because there are so many little things that add up that just feel like it's basically penalizing me for wanting to have more children, and isn't that like what we're being kind of shouted at from all over the place?

Like, we're not replacing, we're not replacing, we're not replacing, and then you go and actually look at the bills you have to pay, or the tax, like how taxes are configured in a lot of ways to support people that are older, like well beyond their reproducing. Maliciously, but it feels like the tax burden is put upon a 28-year-old trying to grow his family. So, I have the policy proposals, and maybe if you know what country this came from, it's interesting. There were, I think, three ideas that we picked out here.

The first one would be expanding upon the Trump accounts by creating a separate newlywed early starters trust account that supports men and women who marry by or before the current average age of first marriage. I think you have in there about 30. That provide for future retirement support for those who do not. So, I am not sure how familiar you are with the specifics of that. I thought that I had never even thought about something like that before. Why did that one come up?

What inspired it? And yeah, it was almost just so unique. I just need to hear your two cents. I am smiling because I am glad, Tom, you realized we did write the paper for you. You were in the audience. Yeah, amazing.

No, in all seriousness, but I'm glad it resonated with you personally, because it should, given your great situation. My colleagues came up with that proposal you mentioned on their own, in the same way that a couple decades ago, it was at Heritage where one aspect of what we all now know as the child tax credit originated. And so, it's our job, going back to your first question, as a policy organization, to do this innovation. Now, President Trump ultimately deserves credit for This idea of an account that hopefully one day will include our social security account, if we have our brothers in heritage, a lifelong account, and the nation of Hungary is doing something like that.

But to cut to the chase, we believe, based on research we have seen from Hungary and from Israel in particular, that this kind of account, although it would be unique in how it is structured in the United States, will have the effect of incentivizing at least a small uptick in marriage and hopefully the birth rate. Yeah, I think it builds upon the sovereign wealth model a little bit, which I've just been banging the drum on. I'm like, there's so much success here, you obviously have to do it right, but it's certainly better than something that's already run out.

So, I'll put that aside for a second. I was just talking last night. My wife had a bunch of women, similar situation over, and they were talking about maternity leave and the frustration of feeling like you need two incomes, but wanting to raise your own children at home. And one of the proposals, which was kind of just like a hit me, was like, okay, of course. I have... Make an average value of credits, programs, and tax benefits currently provided for paid child care available for at-home parental child raising.

Yes. Just to make it a little bit finer point, it'd be the government, instead of paying you money to give to a nursery or somewhere child care to watch your children, it would actually pay the mom to raise their own children.

Now, I can't, like... If we could just even get into all of the benefits of having your own mother raise your children, but what a game changer that would be for these people that feel like they have to go get a job just to pay for child care. Instead, they could actually do the most important job, which would be raising your children. I'm like, I guess that I'm so happy to read this because I'm like, this is like the only paper I've read even talking about something like this, something that every mom on the ground actually talks about day to day with their friends, other people doing the same things.

So, I guess, yeah, if you could go into that a little bit, I'm excited about that proposal. Happy to. We're thrilled that just in one week, not even that, of this paper being released, we have accelerated the national conversation that's been happening in living rooms and dining rooms, not just between married couples or couples who want to be married, but also friends, you know, groups of male friends and female friends. And obviously, accounting for the fact that this is America, we want people to make whatever decision they want to make.

We're not sort of mandating top-down that they have to do one thing or the other. We do know From that aforementioned social science research, in particular, recent work by Dr. Brad Wilcox, that a large majority of full-time working moms want to spend more time at home, and the reason they do is because God, because nature wired men to be a certain way and women to be a certain way, and women, of course, are the much fairer, superior sex of the two, meaning that they...

Oh, thanks. Well played. I completely mean... Agree. Agree, by the way. Completely mean that. Very seriously, both as a policy leader and a husband of 29 years. The point is that what women would like is a slight reduction in full-time hours, maybe even a moderate reduction in full-time hours, so that they can spend more time rearing their children, and a strong plurality of women, to your point, Tom, about the reality that sometimes couples have to get additional jobs just to pay for child care.

Some of them don't want to be working at all, and if, in fact, federal policy were to reflect that choice, and if, in fact, that married couple were making other very wise, prudent financial choices, which would involve some personal sacrifice, right, then we believe that we might finally get this policy right in the United States. We're ecstatic about the possibility that we could thread the needle just right. Yeah, and this is in such contraposition to the The socialist, Mayor Mindani, just down the road from me here, his proposal that, well, the way we're going to fix this problem of two jobs just to pay for child care is we just have more free child care from the time the child is six weeks old.

And to me, this is a political no-brainer that your policy actually appeals to the desires of the heart of the vast majority of Americans, whereas he's talking to a very concentrated elite population on the island of Manhattan. That, oh, of course you don't want to be with your babies. Let's just have more free childcare. So, I mean, this whole, all the policies here.

Like you said, rooted as they are, not only in our own founding in the jurisprudence of the West, but also in Catholic social teaching, Catholics will save America after all, that it does appeal to the desires of the human heart so much more than what else is on offer from other sources. So, I love that. Well, that is so eloquently stated, Erika. Thank you for mentioning it, and I will make an even larger point about it in the next episode. Where Heritage wants to help guide the American Republic in the spirit of this terrific paper, and it is that we not only don't have institutions doing child care, of course, some of them are going to have to exist, right, because decisions that some Americans have to make, and that's fine, but for the desires of the heart, we want two things.

We want both men and women, dads and moms, to be able to spend more time with their kids because it's overwhelmingly clear By all of the social science research, from the political left to the political right, that that's the single greatest determining factor for life success. And that can be measured materially, educationally, but of course, the three of us in your audience think about success being success of the soul. But the second part that I wanted to introduce into this, even though we don't really cover it in this paper, is we have to get back in America to also caring for our elderly family and friends.

We obviously need medical professionals and that whole suite of institutions, but one of the contrasts between the United States and other nations in the West, and it's unfortunately one of the rare negative contrasts for the United States, is that we delegate to other people other than ourselves and our immediate family, caring for our elderly relatives. That also is a matter of the heart, and I think what it does, if we can get to that, we not only are able to confront the terrible scourge of euthanasia, which is...

On the shores of the United States now, but we have to remember that is very much connected to the deterioration of the nuclear family, the decline in birth rates. This is why we issued this paper at the beginning of 2026, America's 250th anniversary, because America has always been the last best hope, not just for freedom. But for human flourishing, for the dignity of the human person, and you can tell we're passionate about how confident we are that we're going to prevail with this policy.

Sure can, and I know we're getting at the end of the time, but you pride yourself on being an action-based organization. These ideas, how would these ideas get from this paper to… Being signed into law, potentially. What is the process? My colleagues are the best in the world, not just those who authored this paper, but also our government relations colleagues who, for months, have been In Congress, in a couple of state legislatures, visiting with elected officials and their staff, and I can tell you, having talked to Steve Charton, who heads up our government relations team a couple nights ago, the response has been overwhelmingly positive, not just by members of the House and Senate here in Washington, but interestingly, Tom, to your point about sort of your family's biography right now, by staff members who are saying, this isn't just important policy, this is important for us.

And so, We now go build the legislative advocacy and brief the administration, and then we go fight for really good votes in Congress. Awesome. Well, thank you, Dr. Kevin Roberts. Always a pleasure talking to you. I was saying before, I almost feel like I kind of know you, even though I've never met you, but hopefully not the last time you appear on the LOOPcast. Thank you so much for taking the time. Thanks for having me. Would love to join you again.

God bless you. Awesome. God bless. Bye. Okay. Oh, that was so cool, Tom. Yeah, what a intro. Oh, I'm pumped now. It is almost like, I don't know, I mean, it is self-centered by making it like, yeah, I am 28 and I have kids, and I guess I didn't mean it that way, but isn't this like the point of politics? Yes, this is the point. And people argue over stuff that, of course, I guess it kind of matters, but doesn't actually impact the...

The individual family or the people in the country that much. And I guess that's why it always comes back to the economy. It's like, what's the top issue? People argue about the different fun, kind of fiery issues about everything. And then at the end of the day, it just comes back to the economy. It's like, well, can you afford to live a good life or can you not afford a good life? And that's what everyone ends up voting on. But this would change the economic reality of people raising children.

Like tomorrow. Right. This wouldn't be generations in the future, and I do appreciate that heritage is very circumspect in how much you can do with just government. This is one prong in the mission to take back our culture for the good, the true, and the beautiful, and so the way I see it is all of the efforts on the cultural front, the family front, the education front. Those are your like 10, 20, 50, 100, the next 250 years of America front.

But what Heritage is saying is we can do things right now so that all those other prongs in this massive civilizational effort can be successful in the long, long, long term. But yeah, these policies, if we pass them, they would affect families that I know that we talk about this all the time. Like, can we afford another child? What are we going to do about the cars? This is very concrete. Love it. Love it. And we didn't have time to fully get into it.

I wish we could have done a three-hour show on it, but I did read through the entire report, and I was going into it expecting drive. That's a heavy lift, Tom. I'm impressed. Yeah. No, it was awesome. Well, it was an easy read. I almost couldn't believe how- No, super readable. It was easy to read, and I kind of said this in the front, but it reminds me a little bit of the Katie Faust conversation you had about surrogacy, in which- You pair social science, rationality, and of course, then there's the religious element, too, but the baseline is rational that everyone can understand based on data and science, and they did such a great job of laying out stuff that I think people would have been too scared to even suggest in this kind of like sanitized conservative environment, like, no, actually, children are entitled to a mother and father, a man and a woman, and that that is the best arrangement for them, and that any other arrangement is suboptimal.

Even if it has to happen, for whatever reason, it is suboptimal, and that things like pornography, surrogacy, IVF, all these other things are a problem because they take away from... Facilitating that original agreement, and that policy actually should go to support this thing that we're affirming, and we've laid out, you know, plenty of research that this is the best arrangement for the family. It's a nuclear family, and I almost feel like we've just gotten away from that or something, or people are too scared to condemn things like homosexuality, or that people are entitled, like they have some kind of right to a child or whatever, and you're like, oh, we don't want to step on these toes.

And this paper very clearly laid out, like, This is the best arrangement. Government policies should facilitate this. If we do not facilitate this, we will not have a country. Yeah. Well, I think for the last 60 years, the whole era of progressivism has been about more and more breaking down the law and taking it away from what is the goal, what is the ideal, what is the flourishing, to legislating towards these radical exceptions. Like, well, what about when two trans men want to have a baby, but they don't want to?

You break down society when you start legislating to the extremes and to the exceptions, and we're going to get into that now with this trans athlete case here with the Supreme Court. Insane that we're even having this conversation. Like, we had to go to the highest court in the land to ask, again, what is a woman? That's what we did. And one member of the highest court in the land still is not really sure about that. She felt like she was with her people.

She's like, we're not biologists here, are we? None of us are. So, let us set it up. There are lots of clips flying around, X, of the oral arguments, but what was the Supreme Court case? How did it get there? And then we can get into some of the highlights. Yes. So, the Supreme Court heard these two back-to-back cases yesterday in oral arguments, and they are being conflated a little bit, but they are distinct. So, the first case was Little v.

Hecox, and this centered on a case out of the state of Idaho. Lindsay Hecox. A male identifying, so, no, this was a... So, biological male identifying as a woman sued so that he could compete on the Boise State women's track team, and now Idaho has protections in law that protect female sports for women only, like only girls do girls sports. Biological women. Yes, this was elevated biological women. I'm not going to use it. Girls or Girls, Ninth Circuit Court in San Francisco.

Then blocked Idaho's law, forcing the state to allow the biological male, okay, I'll say it, to compete on the women's sports team, and it made it all the way to the Supreme Court. It was paired with this case out of West Virginia, and this case was called West Virginia v. BPJ, and that is Becky Pepper Jackson.

At the time that the case was brought was in middle school, a male athlete who displaced since... Since the case was brought, has displaced female athletes over 1,100 times in the last three years, either on the podium or in opportunities on teams. He was also allowed into the girls' locker rooms, where students complained multiple times about aggressive sexual behavior, language, jokes about his male paraphernalia, as they're terming it. His mother...

Brought suit when West Virginia's Save the Women's Sports Act went into law, because it would have kicked him off of these teams. So, his mother sues on behalf of her son, and the ACLU picked up the case. So, both of these cases, the plaintiffs and them were represented by the ACLU.

We've come so far from Title IX. In this case, the Fourth Circuit ruled that the law violated Title IX, so there were challenges to the Equal Protection Clause in the 14th Amendment, which always rears its ugly head when we come to this sort of case, and to Title IX for excluding transgender girls, and I'm quoting there from the plaintiffs.

The Alliance Defending Freedom urged the Supreme Court to allow West Virginia to enforce its law. The court deferred, and finally, last summer, SCOTUS agreed to hear these two cases back-to-back together. And so... Just before I go into the actual arguments, what does this mean? So, whatever the decision is of the court, we'll probably get it in June, as most of these cases come out in June. If the law is upheld for Idaho and West Virginia, it will certainly confirm the right of states to enact laws protecting women's sports.

It will also give precedent for the Trump administration's interpretation of Title IX. You'll remember last January. Title IX, sex is not gender identity, as the Biden administration had said. Sex is your biological reproductive biology, right? So, it will give precedent for that, and it will offer also precedent for other statutes that preserve female-only spaces. You think of locker rooms, you think of bathrooms, and really importantly, women's prisons. So, this decision has some far-reaching implications for women.

It's kind of crazy, though, because it all came down yesterday to, what is a girl? I guess that was kind of inevitable, right? It was. It was inevitable. So, what was the argument for letting the boys into the girls' sports teams?

Well, it was discrimination, right? So, discrimination under Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause, that you're targeting the specific class of people and saying, you can't do this thing you want to do. The ACLU lawyer for the Idaho case argued that her client, so Lindsay, had had medical procedures that mitigated his sex-based advantage, so hormone therapy, surgeries, what have you. She said that the Idaho statute should... ...statute should not apply to her client. Quote, the question is, is there an unfair biological advantage?

And because of the gender transition treatment that this male had undergone, the biological advantage he had had when he was an intact male was gone. Therefore, now it's discriminatory to say you can't be on the girl's team. She said, that's why we're here. We're not proposing a rule of absolute inclusion. Saying, oh, you have to let all boys on the team, but saying that in this case, people like our client, so notice the protected class is becoming very, very narrow, who have mitigated their advantage, don't match the statutory interest.

And just as Thomas came back at this one with really just, so you're telling me. That was basically every. That if there's a boy who's just really bad at sports. If a boy naturally is bad at sports, like he can't hit a tennis ball, he could go play on the girls team because his natural advantage as a male, like he's on the bad end of the bell curve there, right? So, if everyone's on a bell curve, if you're a boy who naturally is just really bad, would you qualify, or is it just boys who have undergone medical intervention?

Who are then really bad, who then can go on the girls' team? So, he's just sort of like exposing all of the absurdities there. Yeah, which is ironic because then they go from, okay, so you're bringing up the ability thing, and they're like, no, but it's based on science because we're going to do these tests on hormone levels or whatever. Right. And then it's like, oh, you want to get scientific about it? There's a biologically ... You know what I mean?

You want to go to the chromosomes? What do you want to do here? You know what I mean? Well, the ADF lawyers did a great job with this, too, because up until this point, most of the argument has been on hormone levels, but they were like, look, you can mitigate the hormone levels, but you have boys. They also ... Your sex is written into your bone structure. It's written into your height, muscle tone, muscle strength, how your ligaments work with your joints.

So, they really broadened that understanding of what we're talking about when we're talking about physical differences between boys and girls, and yeah, it's pretty clear. Yeah, go ahead. Go for it. Here's the clip from Alito. Yeah, go for Alito. I've just been seeing everywhere that even like kind of left-leaning places are like, this is going to be bad. Like, we're basically, this isn't going to end well. Conceding. This was conceding. Here's conceding, yeah.

If it does that, then is it not necessary for there to be, for equal protection purposes, if that is challenged under the Equal Protection Clause, an understanding of what it means to be a boy or a girl, or a man or a woman? Yes, Your Honor. And what is that definition? For equal protection purposes, what does it mean to be a boy or a girl, or a man or a woman? Sorry, I misunderstood your question. I think that the underlying enactment, whatever it was, the policy, the law, the...

We'd have to have an understanding of how the state or the government was understanding that term to figure out whether or not someone was excluded. We do not have a definition for the court. Oops. We do not have a definition. We do not have a definition for the court. So, basically, Alito, in order to enact the law, we need a definition of the term in the law. Do you agree? Yes, I agree. What is that definition? We do not have a definition.

Like, they must have seen that question coming. I don't know how you couldn't have prepared. Okay, and then here's the other side. This is reality on the Supreme Court. Of the overarching classification, you know, everybody has to play on the team that is the same as their sex at birth. But then you have a gender identity definition that is operating within that, meaning a distinction, meaning that for cisgender girls, they can play consistent with their gender identity. For transgender girls, they can't.

So, I think that, okay, as to the part about your ability to pass over from boy to girl, you can go from one way but not the other. I want to be clear that BPJ is not challenging that specific classification. I think that is important to start with. But I think, if anything, that is useful evidence as to the lack of a transgender-based discrimination, because if the legislature were just sort of unsettled by the notion of transgender athletes, I think the answer would have been to then No, I appreciate that.

I appreciate that. I guess I was getting at what I understood the Chief Justice to be trying to discuss, which was this notion that This is really just about the definition of who we... We accept that you can separate boys and girls, and we are now looking at the definition of a girl, and we're saying only people who were girl assigned at birth.

Yes, that is correct. Only people who are girls when they're born are girls. That's what we're saying. Yeah. Yeah. What do you even say? How do you comment on this? It really is crazy that this is where we're at. I mean, even like, I saw people were going at Amy Coney Barrett because she used the term, what was it?

She said trans girls, and then later on, she used the term cisgender later in the hearing. It looks like you did the same. I mean, we literally did that this morning. Like, talking about this is so confusing because Using the phrase transgender girl or whatever, like, you're trying to work out in the law, like, what is, what's being presented by the different sides. And then also, the conversation is so almost feeling intentionally confusing. I'm using the language, manipulating language.

I guess what's encouraging about all of this is, you know, all available reports are really looking like it's going to lean towards sanity here. Like, you're going to be able to, go ahead. Everyone, everyone, like left, right, up, down commentators were saying it's pretty clear the court's going to rule in favor of the states here, given the lines of questioning.

And just to go back to the Amy Coney Barrett thing, because that was, I mean, conservatives were just ripping her up and down social media yesterday for using the terms of the law. Like, how? This concedes, da-da-da-da. Yeah, it's... I would rather none of us ever slip up and use those terms. I'm going to give her a lot of grace, though, because she really put the screws on the ACLU lawyer about this notion that we have this special class of trans people, but that's not actually what the lawyers are arguing.

They're arguing that we have a class of trans people within a class of trans people within another class, and that you cannot govern when the goalposts are constantly moving on who. Is allowed to be considered protected? Whose feelings matter? Et cetera. But I think, like, just to kind of boil it down and why the hearings got so much attention, and you could see this in the crowds outside of the Supreme Court, just sort of an icon of the real choice that's facing Americans, and it's what we've talked about in, like, the battle of the trans on the deep, right?

It comes down to, do you believe that we have a human nature, that sex is something given to us, that there are parameters within which human flourishing can exist, and when you step outside of those and try to break those bounds, you only cause pain and suffering. And then on the other side, you have this extreme transhumanist view that I can be whatever I want. I can break down my body. If I'm a woman, I can just, you know. Rip a baby out of my womb, I can castrate, I can sterilize myself.

If I'm a man, I can turn into a woman. And I was thinking about it this way. Back in the 60s, I was doing some research for the Deep episode this week, which is on liberal women. And why they're so sad. So, check that out on Thursday. But there is this whole notion of you've been treating women as property. Like, women are not your property. And we've gone from that, like we're going to be liberated from being considered men's property, to being a woman is just a property.

It's a property that I can take up and cast off as I see fit. And those are the sort of two ideological choices. And I mean ideological in a neutral way there. The great news is that it's an 80-20 issue right now, that like 80% of Americans see that this is a farce, and you can't live this way. And so, yeah, hopefully... It's like natural law rearing its head. I feel like the greatest example is when you're just seeing obvious boys, like crushing women at the state level.

It was just so unbelievable that... Yeah. I wonder if it's just like people are too nice to actually, you know, do anything about it, or they didn't want to rock the boat, and then it just felt like it all happened at once, where you're just watching these videos. You're like, this is just wrong. Like, it's unnatural. It's wrong. And you make the correct distinction here, and I guess that's why I feel so bad is, you know, we have very confused. Fulton Sheen's going to come up again.

I mean, he talks about this. Like, we have a very confused. Small population of people that are being taken advantage of as political pawns right now to advance an agenda that does not lead to human flourishing. I mean, castrating children and giving them drugs are not going to lead physically to your flourishing, certainly not mentally to your flourishing, and out of some misguided charity, people are basically just bending the knee to that, and that is why even with the language, it reminds me of this.

It's like... It is demonic in a certain way, and I think sin affects us all, so I'm not saying individuals are demonic, but the ideology is demonic in that it creates chaos. You can wear the suit of a woman, you can wear the phrase of a woman, and then you can cast it off the next day. You can force people to call you something, and then the next day. And when God came, he immediately made distinctions. And if you don't live by those distinctions, there's obvious physical fallout from what's happening.

It just makes me so sad to see someone swept up in this. ...had serious medical intervention that changed their life forever. They won't be able to have children. They're going to have to get dialysis for the rest of their life. I mean, just crazy stuff. And that there were people that sat silently and didn't say anything about it out of fear of... In the name of compassion. In the name of compassion. This is the compassionate thing to do, which is what's demonic about it.

So, justice and order here is compassion, and it almost feels like this was just so overwhelmingly obvious through natural law to people that it did become this 80-20 issue, especially because most people have daughters. I think the man part of it, obviously, is disturbing when you see a man transition to a female or something like that, but it's even more disturbing to me to see a woman go the other way, but then also be in spaces where you could be, obviously, taken advantage of.

I mean, how many more cases do we need to see of a man in a women's locker room taking advantage of them, and that, rightfully, you have a righteous anger over something like this. So, I guess I'm encouraged to see this, and lots of Catholics on the Supreme Court right now, which is definitely helpful.

Yeah, really encouraged, I think, by the line of questioning. I mean, I saw some of it, and it just seems like we have a lot of battles we're fighting right now. That one, I feel like, has been kind of decisively decided, and I give a lot of credit to the people that came out when their jobs were being threatened, especially in the medical institutions, like doctors that were blowing the whistle on this kind of thing.

Yeah. Encouraged. Thank you for the breakdown, and I guess we'll see when the decision drops on that. Yeah, we will. Okay. Good news now, Erika. Okay, this is kind of like sad good news, but you've probably all seen Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, did pass away this week, and the good news part of it was his final message, which his ex-wife, sadly, read aloud. It ended, Like this, he said, and I won't, we won't play the whole thing because I'm just going to like break down and cry.

It's kind of long, but you can go watch it. And it said, if you're reading this, things did not go well for me. I have a few things to say before I go. My body failed before my brain. I am of sound mind as I write this January 1st, 2026. Then he says, I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and look forward to spending an eternity with him.

And to me, that was very beautiful and so hopeful. And again, I brought this up on the program a couple of weeks ago. As he was dying, when he first said that he was thinking about becoming a Christian.

And yes, I understand this is a very Protestant way of becoming a Christian, like you just accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. That's the start. That's a Christian way. That's a Christian way. It's a movement of the heart. And this was a guy who... It's the first step. Yeah, not long ago, had gotten online and said, I'm thinking about killing myself, because I don't want to go through this cancer. To go from that to accepting Jesus Christ. In your heart.

It was just a really, it was very beautiful. So, that was my good news. Yeah, I feel like I kind of missed the boat. Maybe if there's anyone in the audience or the chat that really feels connected to Scott Adams. I know that he was a creator of Dilbert, and hilarious to see some of the headline comparisons. A controversial creator passes away or whatever, and then you see what they wrote about the death of a terrorist. They're like, devout Muslim. That was People Magazine.

So, People Magazine was like, Scott Adams. What was it? Scott Adams' cancelled cartoonist dies at age this, and then when O.J. Simpson, NFL star, dies. Disgraced. Disgraced was the exact word. Disgraced cartoonist. So, yeah, I'm really happy to see that he accepted Christ at the end, and I know he's going through it. So, if there's anyone out there that really feels connected to Scott, I know he has a lot of admirers. And let's pray for him. Pray for his soul, because he's got a ways to go.

Absolutely. Okay, I have a fun, exciting announcement. This is great news. The Midwest. It's not good news. Listen, Midwest, we are up. Okay, we are up right now. We got a Midwest Pope, the Bears are flourishing, and the Pillar is reporting that Irish-American hero Fulton Sheen is to be edified. Son of Peoria. I actually think it wasn't Peoria itself, but he spent a lot of time in Peoria, where he wasn't born there. He was born in Illinois, Bishop of Peoria.

And so, they're reporting that it's about to be announced. So, it hasn't been announced yet, but I have directly from the pillar, I'll just read what they say. The Holy See is expecting to announce in coming weeks a date for the beatification of Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Emmy Award-winning American prelate known for his catechetical television programs in the 1950s and 1960s. I wonder if he'll be the first Beatus to also have an Emmy Award. I would guess that's a yes. It still is crazy that he actually did.

Like, he won an Emmy. Like, a Catholic priest won an Emmy. Like, could you imagine? Yeah, have you seen the clips from the Emmys in recent years? Oh my gosh, what? Like, what is even happening at the Emmys? It really is crazy. But back then, they were giving it to priests, so, you know. So, I was looking into this, because I remember, I thought there was, like, momentum on this, because Pope Francis approved, in July of 2019, a miracle attributed to Sheen.

I believe it was the recovery of a baby born, stillborn in 2010. Miraculously revived, the Vatican's dicastery for the cause of saints concluded after his parents prayed that Sheen would intercede for their son. I think it had to do with, he was around some parishes that were going through.

Like, investigation on some sex abuse stuff. Like, I think there were priests kind of in the orbit, and then he was just cleared on all of that. So, they got past it. It was paused in 2019. They got past all that. He was exonerated, and now they can move forward, and he's on his way, hopefully, to becoming a saint. I was going back. Like, you can, of course, do the greatest hits. I mean, never do you look at someone that's so obviously.

Just had the Holy Spirit moving through him when he spoke. I mean, so his series, Life Worth Living, this is just even a crazy story. I just got to read it straight off. It was filmed at the Adelphi Theater in New York City, which again, hard to imagine, like a Catholic priest doing this. It just consisted of Sheen speaking extemporaneously before a live audience. So, he didn't have notes. He didn't have cue cards. He would just kind of go off the dome, although Sheen occasionally used a chalkboard, which you see in the videos, which is super charming.

He was not paid for the program. Life is Worth Living was scheduled in a primetime slot on Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. Its competition was the Texaco Star Theater on NBC, a variety show starring comedian Milton Berle, and the Frank Sinatra Show, another variety show. ...program on CBS. Funny enough, the number of stations carrying life worth living jumped from three to 15 in less than two months. The show started receiving 8,500 letters a week. The show received four times as many requests for studio tickets than can be fulfilled, and then the Frank Sinatra show was canceled the next year.

And someone who really doesn't like pink Sinatra. That's a little nugget that you just shared. But yeah, I mean, he was so successful. Like, what a different world. I mean, the fact that he, but he really was just, like, if you watch him, I mean, there's no denying, he was an undeniable talent.

He could just connect things that made sense, that felt relatable. He kind of had that Irish deal about him. I love, I always see him, you know, he's always stanced up with the two hands on his vest. It's awesome. Yeah. I mean, people compare him to, someone's blessing me for sneezing. Yes, I have a terrible cold. Some people have compared him to sort of like the Bishop Barron of his day, but just someone who was very learned and very intellectually talented, but who He saw that as a talent in the service of all of us, all of us in the church, and so honed his communication skills so that he was such a great communicator of the truth of the faith.

He was also super insightful about his historical moment and his work on communism and his predictions of what would happen given the rise in certain technologies, etc. He predicted a lot of cool stuff. I believe he said, like, Stalin is going to see God a week before he died. Yeah. Something crazy. Like, there's that. He was obviously really good on Nazism, too, and Adolf Hitler. I mean, he just rose to the moment in a way that obviously captivated the nation. I have another funny anecdote.

He won an Emmy Award for Most Outstanding Personality in Accepting as Emmy Sheen. Quote, I feel like it is time I pay tribute to my four writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Thank you very much. That's adorable. It was so awesome. And he wrote 70 books. He was a bishop, had a super famous show for 20 years, something crazy. He wrote 70 books. Crazy. Three to Get Married is still recommended out. It's a fantastic book. Yeah. The first book of his I ever read was Three to Get Married, because when we were engaged, the priest who was going to do our wedding recommended it, and it's so good.

Just so good. But yeah. I can't wait. I'm so excited. Yeah. There were some people I saw that purchased tickets for his beatification ahead of time. I was like, can I still cash these in? You know what I mean? Because they paused it, and now it's back.

The Midwest is up, man. The Midwest is up. You guys are coping with that, as the kids say. Illinois is having a moment. They need it. They need it. It is kind of like the best and the worst, right? We have the Pritzkers and Fulton Sheen and the Pope. We have Ambassador to the Vatican, Chicago guy. And Brian Birch. Pope Leo, Chicago guy. We have Fulton Sheen now coming up, Illinois guy, Midwest. Crazy. What a time to be alive. We're getting some play.

What a time. What a time. Okay. Speaking of church news. Oh, boy. Yes. So, we've got also in church news, less exciting, but still very important. Interesting. So, last week, we had a two-day extraordinary consistory of the College of Cardinals, and the reason this is so exciting is because we haven't had one since 2014. Francis chose not to make these gatherings a part of his pontificate. So, Pope Leo convened this consistory and brought about 170 cardinals, so most of the college, who were available together for prayer, dialogue, and discernment on priorities for the church.

This marked a deliberate shift from Francis's style, where he relied more on smaller advisory councils, not necessarily of... Clergy or bishops, but he likes to keep his people close to his chest. Now, upon their arrival at the consistory, the cardinals were informed that due to time constraints, they would have to select only two topics to discuss in their roundtable sessions, and they voted and they chose evangelization and synodality.

As there are two topics. Liturgy and the reform of the Curia were set aside for a later date. The consistory was conducted with minimum addresses and speeches, with the cardinals mostly talking in small groups. And, interestingly enough, it was held in English. In the past, they've been in Italian, and in the good old days, they were in Latin.

So, now we're to English, the universal language. Yeah, salvete. All right. Now, this was supposed to be a closed-door, confidential meeting, a time for brotherly back-and-forth behind the curtain. And the cardinals were charged to keep all of the exchanges confidential. That didn't happen, so we got a couple of really interesting tidbits from here. In spite of the fact that the cardinals voted not to discuss liturgy, Cardinal Roche, who is an English prelate, and his name has come up multiple times, he was a favorite of Francis, a very, very pro-traditiones custodes, he chose to circulate to the cardinals.

In English and Italian, a two-page document defending Francis' Tradizioni Custodes. His text, which Diane Montagna, how do you say her name, Tom? Montagna, I think. Montagna, there we go. She obtained the copy and put it up at her substack. His letter framed liturgical reform as continuous and essential to the church's life, rooted in Vatican II's document on the liturgy, and insisting that the post-council Roman rite, the Missal of Paul VI, is the sole expression of the law of prayer of the Roman rite.

He set out a comprehensive theological interpretation of the Roman rite, and the text of the Roman rite, and the text of the Roman rite, And historical defense, there is some question about the validity of some of his historical claims of the post-conciliar liturgical reform, and he explicitly rejects any return to the pre-Vatican II form of the Roman rite as normative option for the Church.

Okay, so step back. Yeah. The Cardinals are getting together. The boys are getting back together for the first time in a while. Like 12 years. Because Pope Francis did not prefer this form of communication. No. They get together. They explicitly vote to not talk about liturgy, and then Roche pulls up with a huge liturgical document. I have thoughts.

Right. Yeah, very... You know, continuing, I think, of Traditione Cascodes. Yeah, and excising, and once more, and this has been the frustration with all of the Francis Pontificate's documents on the liturgy, excising the memory of Pope Benedict XVI's attempts to bring the traditional liturgies and other forms of the Mass into main or acceptance in the Church. It was a historical document, but it was very choosy in which pontificates and which announcements from various popes it chose to highlight, shall we say.

Interesting. So, everyone's brains exploded a little. Yep. So, that got leaked out? How did we even? We don't know how it got leaked out, but it was obtained by Diane, and I'm sure we'll find out more. Another set of remarks that got leaked out, this one was much more fun, from our dear friend Cardinal Zen, who is 93 years old, but he made it all the way to the consistory.

And he made his remarks during one of two free discussion periods that was, let's see, so this was like he stood up and he was able to speak during this time of people could talk on anything. And remember, the cardinals had voted to discuss synodality.

Okay, interesting. I suspect that they wanted to discuss it so that they could finally find out what it is. Here was Cardinal Zenz. Here's some choice quotes from what he said, and holy smokes, guys. He said, basically, like, synodal way threatens the unity of the church. If the bishops believe themselves to be more competent, do the differing interpretations and choices not lead our church to the same division or fracture found in the Anglican communion, he asked. So, he's tying synodality with the fractures in the Anglican church.

That are going on right now. Regarding the Orthodox Church, Zen said he believes that their bishops will never accept what he called Bergoglian synodality. And as for them, synodality is the importance of the Synod of Bishops, because you remember that Francis' synodality It was all about listening to the people of God, like all of us, I guess, but not— Well, yeah, as evidenced by the people that showed up. Like, it was— Uh, just about everyone. I think it was, yeah, it was just random groups.

But dissolving and never calling the Synod of Bishops or the College of Cardinals into groups. Maybe attacking what he perceived as clericalism or something like that by bringing, okay. Exactly. Pope Francis, Zen said, exploited the word synod, but has made the Synod of Bishops, an institution established by Paul VI, disappear.

Interesting. What is the Synod of Bishops? I see. The Synod of Bishops were gatherings of the bishops as the successors of the apostles to address questions of not doctrine, because that is magisterial, that would be conciliar, but of pastoral.

The praxis of the church, and it was pretty much done. This was interesting. I think that it picked up on what Bishop Barron was saying. He wasn't at the consistory, of course. He's not a cardinal, but he said this was really interesting from him. I understand that one of the topics under consideration at the consistory of cardinals is synodality. I, Bishop Barron, am speaking as a bishop who is an elected delegate to both rounds of the synod and synodality in Rome, and who has I've just presided over a local synod in my own diocese.

Synods are good and useful tools for the determination of practical pastoral strategies, but they oughtn't be forms for debate regarding doctrine. When settled teaching becomes a subject for synodal determination, the Church devolves into relativism and self-doubt, as is clearly evident in the misconceived synodal way of Germany.

And he goes on there. It is a great quote. We should throw that in the chat for people to read, but it was... But I think it nails it, right? Yeah, it totally nails the issue with synodality. Yes, but anyway, so the report. And I think you brought this up too, which is another interesting kind of church politics move, is Pope Leo's announced that he's, is it not just annual, but semi-annual, or is it annual? It's going to be annual for the time being, and he said he's open to more frequent meetings as well, but this, so right now, it's going to be an annual event with the cardinals gathering in this way, in this large group, to address the needs of the church.

I'm excited for it. Hopefully, you had a good time. Yeah, no, that's interesting. Let's do it again, boys. It is interesting to kind of get inside there a little bit of what the topics of debate are. I don't know. I've seen a lot of, just from what I've seen, a lot of really positive moves, like folks on the family, folks on the nuclear family, folks on life issues. It feels like we're kind of moving back in that direction in a good way, and then just having an annual meeting with the Cardinals in general seems like a really good thing if you want to get a pulse on what the importance of people all around the world care about with the church.

People like Cardinal Zen, I mean. Certainly, Cardinal Sennett has some strong thoughts on San Antonio, and maybe there is something in the synodal path or whatever. Someone would mount another argument, but at least the arguments are happening. It feels like the door has kind of been opened again for proper authority in the church or something like that. Total outsider observation. Yeah, I love that the cardinals, who are the princes of the church, are being called to meet and to advise the pope and to just talk with the pope.

Because, I mean, For so long, the atomization of the way that the different arms of the church were working together, it was the human face of the body of Christ, for sure, rather than what was given to us by God, who called Peter, James, John, Andrew, Bartholomew, like, guys, get together, hang out with me, come follow me. So, I think this idea of the cardinals being together as much as possible. It mirrors that. It mirrors the structure that Christ gave us.

So, let us get back to that. Okay. Very interesting. Twilight Zone now. Erika, what do you got? Oh, man. I've got the Clintons. I've got to pull this one up. I have to admit. So, James Comer subpoenaed the Clintons, Bill and Hillary, to come and testify in the House's Epstein investigation, and they have refused. They have refused, Tom. On principle. So, here is what I will say. Here is what I will say before this. You go for it. Steve Bannon went to jail for not cooperating with a congressional subpoena.

That is the standard, by the way. Yeah. That is my standard in my mind. If you could do that to him, it should be done to everyone who denies a congressional subpoena, but go ahead. Yeah, I am shocked, Tom, that you would mention that because I have it on the authority of Bill Clinton himself that this is an unprecedented act that someone would ask. Okay, I'm just going to read it. So, William Jefferson Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, on very nice letterhead, submitted this letter to Chairman Comer and conveniently dropped it on their Twitter account.

We want to take a moment, given everything, to address you directly. This past year has seen our government engage in unprecedented acts, including against our own citizens. People have been seized by masked federal agents from their homes, their workplace.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, ice, ice, ice, ice. The people who laid siege to the U.S. Capitol January 6th comes up. They go through the whole thing. Every person, they say, has to decide when they have seen or had enough and are ready to fight for this country, its principles, and its people, no matter the consequences. For us, now is that time. Wait, wait, wait. So, did they bring up the Epstein stuff by name at all?

Let's see. That's hilarious. They were just like, my reasoning for not showing up for a congressional subpoena because you were for sure involved with Epstein is all these other reasons that have nothing to do with what I'm being called for. Yeah, and then they tell Comer that you have so much work to do as Congress, and you're distracted by this Epstein thing. You shouldn't be. Move along. The letter is, it's just, it's so obtuse. It's so obtuse, but the fact that the Clintons of all people are like, now we have decided.

That no matter the cost, we're going to stay like... Would you like me to get into Pizzagate, by the way? Oh, Pizzagate. Oh, my gosh. So, here's the thing, which is like for all the Epstein people, people paying attention. Pizzagate was like totally brandished as an insane conspiracy theory that had no truth and that you should not have any say in like polite political discussions if you'd like to bring up Pizzagate. I mean, even the name Pizzagate.

Pizzagate is like 100% true. Like, maybe not 100% true, but like elements of it are undoubtedly true. John Podesta, because the DNC emails were leaked out, made insane references to foods, and the way that this all got litigated, if anyone would like to look into it, I was shocked in that, because I actually was like, yeah, Pizzagate, crazy people talked about that. And then I started looking into it, and I was like, um.

Why is John Podesta involved with this? Why is there this strange pizza place? So, anyway, this reminds me of that in a way, and the sad reality about the Epstein thing, too, is Clinton's probably complicit in some way. All of these people are complicit. Trump's complicit in some way, and you just want to move on it, and we're probably never going to get anything, but the reality is that whatever the Epstein phenomenon is, what it reveals is not that rich and powerful people engage in sordid sexual acts.

That's been going on since the beginning of time. The reality is, is that there's a group of people that are above the control of the American people. Like, we don't have, this was the greatest example that we actually don't have as much control as we should in a constitutional Republican, because the Clintons are just going to say, I'm not going to testify, and nothing's going to be done to them, by the way. Trump is just going to say, ah, it's all a hoax, he's going to get away with it, nothing's going to be done to them.

All of the former heads of state, the worst thing that was done. Was what they stripped Prince Andrew of his title because he had like the worst interview of all time. He can't be a prince anymore. He was compulsive too. So, we get these victims and that's terrible. And that is terrible. But the reality is that there's like a jet setting group of the richest people in the world and high government officials that are never going to receive punishment because there's no means to actually punish them.

We don't have the power to do so. So, the Clintons are just the latest of all of this. And that's why people are frustrated about it. Yeah, exactly. The icing on the cake was that the Clintons earlier refused to testify behind closed doors. They were offered a private testimony to give to the committee, and they refused it and said, no, no, no, we want to do this in public. We want to do it before the whole American people. We will show we're, you know, without blame.

And now they're like, no, we don't want to do that either. Right. JK, JK. And then you really have the gall to make this about other things going on instead of just... Right, exactly. Can we just be honest here? You're above punishment. Yeah, you're above the law. Don't even give me the wax poetic about how this is about the freedom. No, you did stuff with Epstein you shouldn't have done. And there's literally a Clinton kill list. Like, go through all the people that have been in their circle that mysteriously passed away.

Just be honest. Or just don't say anything, I guess. Like, all of these people are just... Nothing's going to happen to them, and they know it. No. But, I mean, that doesn't mean you can blackmail about everything that goes on in government, I guess, is the true answer. Like, you've still got work to do.

But, yeah, that's just a reality, probably an eternal reality of the human condition. Stinks. Okay, mine, all right, this was kicking up on social media, and here, I'll preface this with, when people get mad about Planned Parenthood receiving funding, I'm not going to be mad at them. Planned Parenthood is an abortion mill that takes the life of innocent Americans that could help the birth rate and harms women.

And it's predatory, and they are an evil organization, started by an evil person, Margaret Singer. So, anytime, that's why I'll couch this with, like, I've seen the reaction online. I think it's, you know, justified in some way, because it is terrible to see them receive funding again. So, the big Politico drop was lawsuit dismissed after Trump administration quietly restored tens of millions to Planned Parenthood. Progressive groups dropped their case against HHS over the withheld family planning funds, but other challenges continue, and it's specifically the American Civil Liberties Union.

They dropped this lawsuit because the Trump administration quietly returned some funding to Planned Parenthood. They backed down, right. They backed down. So, I have some insight from Tim Foiltown and some people who are on the inside at HHS. I can give their explanation of it. I did some of my own research to see what was really going on here.

So, let us see. This centers around Title X, okay? Title X is a, it's Title X of the Public Health Service Act. In the United States, it's their only federal grant program dedicated exclusively to providing, quote, family planning and related preventative health services. Oh, boy. I believe it was started back in Nixon. And what's going on here is that the Trump administration last March informed more than a dozen healthcare providers.

In the Title X Family Planning Program, including nine Planned Parenthood state affiliates, that their funding would be, quote, temporarily withheld due to possible violations of federal civil rights law and President Donald Trump's executive orders. If you remember, in January, there was the flurry of executive orders. This was a part of it.

And so, I think from what I'm hearing from Tom is that that was done a little bit in haste. The way that they went about doing that would not have held up in court. So, let's get started. From Tom, the HHS cut funds before they amended specifically Part 300 to allow for this kind of early termination. They were 100% guaranteed to lose and have to return all the money, pay any interest, and pay attorney's fees. Worst of all, if they didn't drop the case, any new cuts, which are very likely to come under the new rule, will be tied up in existing litigation before a hostile judge.

They're not suggesting the HHS should be slammed for this because they just didn't have good options. This was done by executive order by President Trump. But if you go back. There was something called the Protect Life Rule that Trump actually passed in 2019. So, for those that are curious of what the Protect Life Rule was, it made significant changes to this Title X family planning program through a final rule issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The rule aimed to strengthen enforcement of the existing statutory prohibition. I don't want to get too tactical on this, but it basically is saying that none of the Title X funds may be used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning. It introduced stricter interpretations and new requirements that went beyond prior administrations. So, the effect of that 2019 rule was that major providers like Planned Parenthood, which served about 40% of Title X patients, withdrew from the program rather than comply.

And as the rules conflicted with their standard practices of providing abortion, let us just put it that way, an estimated 900 to 1,300 clinics, roughly a quarter to half of the network, they just exited Title X. So, that was done in 2019. That was really good that that was done, because it's dystopian to say that, quote, family planning should include abortion. So, actually, I give Trump a lot of credit for that. I almost forgot about that. Right. They were going through Title X and basically changing it to what it should have been.

Abortion is not a part of that. President Biden's first day in office, if this spreads to anyone, literally first day, rescinded the Protect Life Rule. So, now major providers like Planned Parenthood rejoined that network, started in 2022 funding cycles, and then started rebuilding capacity. So, immediately, Biden got rid of this, and I think it was held up in court a little bit as well.

What's happening now is, I believe the Trump administration has a rewritten version of this Protect Life rule, and I wonder if they're planning on introducing it during the March for Life. I don't know. I don't have any inside information on this. That's what the buzz is in Washington. That's what the buzz is. They wanted to do a big rollout March for Life week. You know, J.D. Vance was at the March for Life last year. They wanted something to show their support.

So, that's the buzz and the hope. The hope is also that they've reworded it in even stronger language. Right. So, that's the best possibility. So, what happened in 2019, it also got kind of immediately kind of like. ...picked up in court battles. So, from what I understand, they're going to be writing better language and then announcing it potentially around March 4th. I don't know, again. They should announce it soon. From what I've heard, it's written very well, and that it would be reinstated so that we get back to the status quo of providing those services without abortion.

And I also saw in this article an admission to, which the process is the penalty in a way. So, they even said in this article that the clinics and groups representing them argue, however, that the restored funds will not undo all of the harm done over the many months the money was withheld, though many clinics have been saving the receipts from low-income patients who came in for birth control, testing for STDs and other Title X services, which they're not saying abortion, of course, which it is.

So, in my mind, maybe this was done not perfectly, but it did result in Planned Parenthood clinics closing, which I think is fantastic for the country. And so, even though they had to kind of slide these funds back, all of this will potentially change with that new Title X language. Yeah, and that's that, like I said, best case scenario, that's what's happening.

I wish, of course, I wish that that regulation had been ready to go as soon as they knew that they were going to lose that lawsuit and they were going to have to restore those funds. Because it would have been better to not have this lapse in time when Planned Parenthood is getting tens of billions of dollars again. But like you said, Tom, looking at the effect of how they did it, there was good that was accomplished just in the fact that dozens of clinics have closed in the last year, in part because they lost this Title X funding.

So, online, people are lighting their hair on fire, and it's an opportunity, of course, for us to just urge, before we react on Twitter, let's get the full story of what's going on here. That being said, I do appreciate... The hair on fire wing of the pro-life movement, because this is about people dying. This is about babies being slaughtered, and so it should be an emotional, we should have these emotional, strong emotional reactions, but remembering that.

That they are in service of holding this administration accountable to the really good promises it has made to the American people, that it's going to put this rule back in place and wake up call to Congress that people are still interested in the abortion issue. We are still watching what you do, so let's do something permanent in law, so the rules aren't just ping-pong back and forth between administrations as we go back and forth in this way. I think in general, and we'll see what ends up happening with Iran.

We didn't cover that today, but it's tough because it's hard to get accurate information out of the country. They don't have internet. For everyone wondering about Iran, we are watching it. We are waiting for Trump to actually do something instead of do a truth about it. And that's kind of the thing here. So, people were kind of tacking on this political article that got announced, and then Trump saying that Hyde is kind of on the table. Hyde's a negotiating chip. And so, the pro-life wing of the party is like, what have I gotten from you the last couple weeks?

Potential IVF expansion, Hyde being on the table, and then now you're just sliding money back to Planned Parenthood. I see the frustration, for sure. And in a similar fashion, I like that there's people that, even if that's suggested, that they get angry and make a fuss about it online or in person, because they should. This is how seriously we take the life issue. It's actually not a negotiating chip. But the reality of Trump is that, if you've read The Art of the Deal, you understand this, everything is on the table for Trump.

In the same way how he's treating Iran right now, which, like, It's really frustrating to people that care about our actions abroad and, you know, no new foreign wars. In the same way, the pro-life wing, like, we're not giving up Hyde, and we're not going to be funding Planned Parenthood. That's unacceptable. He throws things out, and then what it ends up landing on is what you actually need to assess. And I think if Title X funding does not, if they don't have an announcement on that, if nothing changes under the new rule, that is the time to go nuclear.

On the Trump administration, that is the time where you say, save the gunpowder. This is completely unacceptable, and there needs to be changes. But for right now, I feel like we're a little bit in that kind of art of the deal negotiating phase. So, that's at least how I try to treat it, because I've caught myself, too. You see a headline online, and you're just like, oh my gosh, I can't believe Trump trued that out. This is terrible. No one wants this.

No Catholic wants this. And also, talk about how counterproductive. If you think about, we started up top in the show about How do we encourage family formation from a man and a woman in a married household having children, and how can we support that cohort? I cannot think of anything that would be more counterproductive than giving federal money through Title X for people to receive abortions to kill their children. To kill your children. That was the status quo, by the way, certainly before that rule in 2019, before the Trump administration, and then during the Biden administration, they are like, how do we get people abortions on federal land?

You almost forget how crazy that was. That was the... Like, preeminent priority of the Biden administration. So, we'll see what ends up happening. You know, fortunately, we have, like, people like Tom McCluskey, we have some good sources on the inside, who I think are, you know, getting people's ear and helping them out in that way, because it really is.

In many ways, it's just as important, if you have your victories, that you need to sell your victories, or if you have shortcomings, that you need to get out in front of your shortcomings to give a rational explanation when you can to the public so that you don't lose this support that you should have. You don't get headlines like, the Trump administration quietly gives tens of millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood, which they knew when they wrote that headline.

It'd be great to hear from Russ, and maybe Russ knows this, or like someone that's really fluent in budgets or HHS, RFK Junior, something like that. Be like, hey, this happened for this reason. You know, we're not giving up on the pro-life cause, and it is actually a priority. Hey, look at all these things we've done, but this is what's going to happen, and maybe they are going to do this over the March for Life, so this could all be premature, but that's kind of going on in my head.

So, okay. Good show. Kevin's the man. Josh, I'm sure, was listening, waiting to bust in like the Kool-Aid man. I think he is maybe back for Friday. We'll see on Friday. He always does this. He's like, I'm going to come back, and then he'll show up on Friday. Love you, Josh. So, if you want to support us, go check out Charity Mobile. Thank you for sponsoring the show. Very appropriate that we end with a pro-life sponsor.

If you want to support us, the best way to do so is become a champion, CatholicVote.org slash champions, where you can do that. Thank you to our monthly supporters. And then we're going to end in a prayer today. In the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Amen.

We pray, O Lord, for the United States of America. We pray for our leaders, that they be inspired to lead according to your will. Most especially, we pray that every Catholic in America will be inspired to live out the truths of our faith and public life, and that it will lead to the renewal of our church and country. St. Thomas More, pray for us. St. Fidelis, pray for us. Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us. Amen. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, you guys have a great week. We will catch you Thursday with an episode of The Deep. It is going to be good, and then Friday for another show. Peace.